Yesterday I came home from my meeting to find my husband Jimmy busily looking for something. Jimmy couldn’t find the plastic decals we were putting up on top of our kitchen cupboards. He had been looking for quite a while and asked me to help. We continued to look for another long time.

Finally we are downstairs in his work room. He sees a box up on top of his work cupboard and wonders if he put the decals there. He gets a stool and steps up to look what was inside. The decals weren’t in there. He steps down off the stool and steps right onto some piles of ‘stuff’ on the floor causing him to fall over.

Out of fear I reacted telling him to be careful and watch what he was doing. I said he knew there were things all over the floor and to be mindful of where he put his foot. Hearing that he looks down and sees the plastic cutting board with the plastic decals on! His search was over, he found them.

He continued to thank me for telling him to watch what he was doing. My words caused him to look down to the floor. He saw the decals hiding under some books. Jimmy commented so many times about how my reaction caused him to look down finding what he was looking for.

We both started to celebrate his great find! Sometimes….our reactions serve us in more wonderful ways then we know! Have you ever experienced that?

I’ve been very privileged to coach some young teenagers. These young teenagers are having trouble making sense of what they are feeling. They get mad and express their anger. Not only that, these teenagers are turning their anger in on themselves because they don’t know how to change what they are feeling.

One young teenager I was talking with was upset and angry. While angry this teenager acted out damaging things and causing some hardship to others. In our coaching session this teenager started to recognize where some of the anger was coming from. They could feel the emotions expressed through their physical body. They could piece together events in their life causing them to get upset. There was greater awareness to work with.

At the end of the session I talked with the teenager about life lessons. I shared how they will experience things in life which are difficult. Those difficult experiences offer them life lessons to help them grow. What could be learned from their experience? What might the Universe be trying to teach them?

I invited the teenager to see the life lesson of how uncontrollable anger can potentially hurt people, cause damage and hardship. They experienced what that felt like for them. Now they are getting a sense of what it feels like to move through their emotions resolving the anger inside. With that awareness they may not be acting out like they did before.

I helped the teenager see how the Universe had given them a gift. There will be potential messages with difficult situations. They can now work on being mindful of the dynamics that take place when emotions start to surface in their life.

I personally feel when it comes to everyday living, feelings and emotions are not something to be taken lightly. People become very vocal when they are frustrated and angry. What causes people to feel what they are feeling? How can people resolve the unrest inside resulting in experiencing a more fulfilling purposeful life?

When talking with someone are you aware of what is being spoken both inside and outside your Self? Until recently I hadn’t given that a thought.

I’m at a stage in my life where I’m moving through a number of blocks when it comes to listening in general. I discovered these blocks have to do with the conditioning I experienced growing up. Allow me to share some insights with you helping you to see how conditioning plays a part in everyday life.

Professionally, I’ve been working with the different words I use to explain what I do as a Relationship Coach. For example, I explain to people, ‘I coach professional women through the pain of upset to have clarity, focus and passion.’ Now when I express those words to people I pause to hear what people have to say. Pausing after I talk adds a new and interesting dynamic when it comes to listening. To wait helps me to hear if people ask me questions about what I said or if people change the subject to maybe talk about something totally unrelated. This dynamic of pausing has not been easy for me at all. I’m realizing this focused attention on listening in business is also helping me in other areas of everyday life.

I started to be mindful of my listening skills and asked myself this question, ‘what was blocking me from listening?’ In no time I could see two areas in which I was blocked from being present enough to listen to people. See if this is something you can maybe relate to…

The first area I was blocked in had to do with the times I wasn’t hearing what was being spoken after I was done speaking. The person I was talking with would say something and I didn’t fully remember what they said. I became aware of this when asked by someone else what the other person said. I couldn’t remember where they went in the conversation. That realization started to bother me.

What was causing me to not hear what the other person had said that day? I started to observe I was ‘distracted’ from the words….and drawn to something else. That something else had to do with how things looked to me including the person’s looks! You have no idea my reaction when I learned that about myself. I could see I was getting caught up in how the person looked when they were talking. Judgments were going through my mind clouding what I was listening to. Now aware of that, I started to ask to be shown what those judgments were all about. I soon learned when I was growing up I was conditioned to see ‘looking good’ was more important than ‘sounding good.’

The second area I was blocked in had to do with what I was ‘listening to on the inside of myself.’ This showed up through a Toastmaster’s meeting. At one of our meetings, I was Grammarian. One of the tasks of the role as grammarian is to look for filler words like ah, eh, um, etc. Another task has to do with picking out examples of excellent use of language when speaking. As the meeting moved along I found myself becoming distracted. I found I wasn’t capturing all the filler words. I noticed myself getting stuck in the fear of not knowing what I can or can’t…should or shouldn’t say. Not only that, I didn’t feel comfortable that I could express those words favorably. When it got to my turn to speak in the meeting, I quickly presented what I observed in my assessment and sat down.

After that meeting, I was very aware something didn’t feel right inside. I asked myself the question, ‘what was I looking for and what was blocking me from listening?’ I knew I had to listen for filler words and to listen for examples of excellent usage of language. Where I got hung up had to do with how to express those things favorably and in an uplifting way. The awareness of being distracted led me to the place of finding the unrest inside.

When you think of your own listening skills are you noticing there are moments you may not hear everything spoken both inside and outside of you? You may find you are great at listening to your co-workers…but maybe not so great at listening to the people around you at home. You may find you listen closely when the topic of conversation is something you really enjoy…but maybe you ‘shut your ears’ at times when the conversation is about something that upsets you. If you aren’t listening when hearing something upsetting, are you noticing what you may be saying to yourself on the inside?

Here are two areas to consider when it comes to being more attentive when listening:

Listening on the outside of you – listening plays a huge part in observing what is spoken or not spoken by others after you are done speaking! In other words if you are listening AFTER you speak, you will hear where the person goes with what you said. If the person starts to talk about something totally unrelated what are you noticing in that? What are they not hearing in what you said? If you ask someone to do something and they go do something else what are you observing? Your observations after you speak will make a huge difference in your ‘listening’ regardless of what happens.

Listening on the inside of you – a clear sign there is a block in listening is when you get lost in a conversation and don’t remember what was just said! One factor relating to this has to do with ‘what you are listening to on the inside of yourself.’ Are you distracted? Could you be getting lost in your judgments or conditioning? For example, to get lost in your judgments could have to do with being critical around how something is worded. To get lost in conditioning may have to do with not waiting for people to finish speaking. You may cut them off because you experienced that kind of behavior growing up.

One of the graces with everyday life is we learn so much through our experiences. Becoming aware is important. Listening both inside and outside of you will be a guide for you to hear what you are saying and if what you are saying is received by the listener at the time.

May you find what works for you…find your own truth…and you will always be guided to feel at peace inside.

I will be at the University in India from November 18 to December 20th this year. I wish you so much wonderment heading into the Christmas Season. May you experience much joy as you journey into the New Year!

Have you ever been in a place where you were going about your day and all of a sudden out of nowhere someone does something and now you are mad…and I mean mad? Maybe someone pushed you a little too far; maybe they just happen to be the one to say the wrong thing at the wrong time. What do you do?

When you are angry, you are angry. The interesting thing about anger showing up unexpectedly is we often don’t even know where that intense anger is coming from. Then what usually happens after the anger comes out is we beat ourselves up for doing what we did. Have you ever been there? Could that anger be a good thing?

After you got mad and beat yourself up, have you ever noticed how things started to change for the better?

It has been my experience when working with people…they have trouble with the whole idea of being angry or even thinking they could get to a place of expressing anger with any intensity. The thought of anger may bring up memories of times when they witnessed people who always seemed to be angry or people taking their anger out on others. Would it be the emotion of anger or would it be the expression of anger that bothers them?

Anger is a common emotion expressed by every person if they want to or not. Anger often opens a gateway for you to resolve challenges in your life. Regardless of who or what is involved in the situation around anger, the fact that you got mad is an important sign you have something deep down inside bothering you! There is some unrest around what took place at the time you were angry. This is a time to really notice what is going on around you. Why would that be useful?

If you got mad because someone didn’t do what you asked them to do or someone didn’t do their job causing you to fall behind in your work, notice what else is going on around you? Are you feeling pressure about something and now this other dynamic of people not doing what you needed them to do is causing you to feel angry? Being aware is very important. Trying to change or suppress anger will not make you less angry; to change or suppress anger will only bury your feelings inside. Those valuable moments of feeling angry can guide you to a place of resolving unrest inside.

Anger can actually ‘shake things up’ in yourself and others. Consider these points…

Anger can move you into a place of doing something you’ve been wanting to do for long time, kind of propels you forward somehow;

Anger can stop you from something that doesn’t feel right, kind of getting you to a place where you will not tolerate whatever that was any longer;

Anger can be the instigator which starts to set things ‘right,’ kind of letting yourself know a change is taking place (and that change can easily be positive.)

Allow me to put this forward….if you find it hard to deal with anger you may be in a place where anger could be hiding behind something else. For example, if you’ve always considered yourself to have high anxiety, the emotion of anger may be ‘hiding’ behind what you think is anxiety. What if the feeling of being anxious was more about being angry? Or if you find certain behaviors hard to be around causing you to feel stressed over how someone could act that way, the emotion of anger may be hiding behind feelings labeled as stress.

Talking about anger and what it is for you can help you shift your perception leaving you in a more empowered place. To be in a more empowered place can help you to resolve those feelings that can be buried deep down inside of you.

When anger is expressed fully…in other words when you let the anger out instead of suppressing it…the anger you are feeling in that moment will be ‘done.’

From my experience, to express any feeling fully is best done at a time when you are alone and you can be with what you are feeling. Start by thinking about what made you mad. Feel what comes up inside of you…you may be feeling sensations in your body or a pressure seems to overtake you. Stay with those feelings without judging what you are feeling or without trying to change anything. Those feelings will eventually be gone and the anger you were feeling resolved. Depending on the intensity of what you are processing determines the amount of time it takes.

The most important thing is your awareness. To be aware of feeling angry is about recognizing what is taking place in that moment; being mindful something bothers you and then going forward resolving it.

May you find what works for you…find your own truth…and you will always be guided to feel at peace inside.